


propel you through the golden age

by openended



Series: Marge the Cat [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Cabin Fic, Community: fandomaid, Eloping, F/M, Fluff, Reading Aloud, Romance, Summer, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam + Jack + cabin + wedding</p>
            </blockquote>





	propel you through the golden age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canadianfolk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianfolk/gifts).



> Written for **canadianfolk** , who won me in **fandomaid** ’s Japan auction (so so _so_ sorry for the delay!)
> 
> Beta'ed by **lavenderseaslug** ; her awesomeness is responsible for the naming of "Operation Marshmallow."

It’s hot.

He hadn’t intended for it to be hot. It’s only the middle of May and while Minnesota does get hotter than people from other places expect, it should be tolerable until at least the middle of June. He’d planned on some warmth, sure, but not the kind of sticky heat where merely getting out of bed sends beads of sweat trailing down your back.

Sam, for her part, has taken it in stride and he’s curious (but not enough to ask, fearing the answer somehow involves the entire SGC and possibly the President) how she acquired a bikini: she beamed to his front doorstep directly from the _Hammond_ , standard-issue duffel bag in hand. He knows for a fact - because he’s watched her pack every time she leaves - that the swimsuit was _not_ something she brought to the ship.

Jack suspects she’s enjoying the heat and warmth and slight mugginess more than she would have a few years ago. After months of being cooped up in a spaceship with only stale, scrubbed, recycled air to breathe, fresh air has to be a luxury. Her crew does most of the planet-side work, her expertise needed off the ship only when the locals aren’t amenable to anyone but the person in charge or when something breaks spectacularly and none of her hand-picked scientists can make head or tails of it.

There are a million and four things they should be doing. For reasons escaping him, their wedding is to be a formal and somewhat interplanetary affair. From the grumbling tone of Sam’s emails recently (and the frowny faces that sometimes accompany yet another government-suggested addition to the guest list), she doesn’t fully understand it either. It has something to do with them being if not legendary, at least really damn important in the inception of the Stargate program and the establishment of more than a few allies, but he’s never been given a straight answer as to _why_ it seems like half the galaxy needs to be involved with him and Sam getting married. He’s had words with the President himself about this - neither Jack nor Sam have any interest in a big white floofy affair, they’d both be quite happy with Daniel, Teal’c and Cassie making up the entirety of the guest list - but the man simply shrugged, apologized, and mentioned something about politics which Jack promptly tuned out.

Sam walks inside, adjusting the waistband of a pair of tiny red shorts on her hips. “What are you doing inside? It’s beautiful out.”

Jack takes one look at her slightly-pink skin (she’s been obsessive about the sunblock and sitting in the shade, but sometimes these things can’t be helped) and the light sheen of sweat across her chest and lifts an eyebrow. “Because it’s ninety-five degrees outside. Plus humidity.”

She shakes her head, smiling as she walks past him into the kitchen. “It’s not that bad,” she says, her head in the refrigerator looking for the jug of lemonade they made last night.

Her fingertips are cold against his skin when she comes back, sliding her hand across his shoulders. “Those aren’t awful,” she says, nodding to the invitation template sitting on the top of the pile.

He frowns, though the feeling of her cheek against his usually makes him smile. “Yeah. ‘Not awful’ is a recommendation we should go with.” Along with being informed that because of their positions they were being forced into some crazy machine of a wedding, they were given a very perky wedding planner named Mallory who annoys him in person almost daily and irritates Sam via email on the weekly databursts. He feels Sam chuckle and press a kiss against his temple.

“We could elope,” Sam says as if it’s a perfectly valid recommendation, dropping into the chair next to him. She sets her lemonade glass down on a pile of paper that she’s certain she should be reading, but it’s probably about flowers or string quartets and quite frankly she’s more comfortable discussing hyperdrive mechanics and the equations behind unstable wormholes. She reaches behind her and tugs at the elastic band holding her hair up off her neck until it releases the ponytail; running her fingers through her hair a few times to loosen it, she pulls it back up again.

Marge hops on the table and meows. Sam scratches her behind the ears before picking her up and setting her down on the floor.

Jack blinks at Sam. “Really?”

She nods. She’s been thinking about this for a while, and thinks it almost might work. “We’ll still have to do all...this,” she glowers at the kitchen table, covered in pamphlets and glossy photos and color swatches, but her expression brightens when she looks up at Jack again, “but we’d have something just for us.” She absently rubs her thumb against the band of her engagement ring; she’s not supposed to wear it on duty, so it usually hangs with her dog tags. She prefers it on her finger.

“Think we could get Daniel and Teal’c here?” Jack means within the next three weeks, before updates and repairs on the _Hammond_ are finished and Sam has to leave again.

Nodding slowly, a smile creeps across Sam’s face. “Cassie’ll kill us.” She’s currently backpacking through Southeast Asia without too much reliable contact, and while Sam knows they could easily pull a few strings to find out exactly where she is and fly her back for a couple of days, there’s apparently a boy involved in the trip now and the cover story Cassie would have to invent might border on ridiculous.

Jack contemplates this. “I’m okay with that.”

Sam’s smile widens. “So am I.”

* * *

With strict warnings to tell absolutely no one of their plans lest somebody call someone who calls someone who calls someone who calls the President (General Landry figures it out before Sam has a chance to tell him the reason for wanting to see Teal’c, but promises he’ll keep it silent in exchange for a slightly bigger piece of cake when the official affair happens in Washington a few months from now), they easily arrange for Teal’c and Daniel to come up over the weekend. Making decisions on Operation Marshmallow (as Jack has taken to calling it) becomes a lot easier after that.

They take a break for dinner - Sam insisting they eat outside - and return to the problem of colors.

“Blue.”

“What color blue?”

Jack thinks for a moment. “Event Horizon Blue.”

Sam looks up from the notebook and frowns. “Okay, _I_ know what color that is and so will ninety percent of the guest list, but I don’t think we can tell Mallory,” her voice goes up almost an octave on the woman’s name, accompanied by wide eyes and a tilt of her head in a way that scares Jack just a little bit because while it _is_ an eerily accurate representation, it’s downright terrifying on Sam, “that our colors are silver and Event Horizon Blue.”

Jack looks at her a moment. “And you’re telling me, in the history of the Stargate program, no one’s ever once taken a picture of the damn thing?” He watches recognition dawn over her face and puts his hand over hers when she moves to pull her laptop out of its bag. “Ah. Make a note, we’ll ask about the picture later.” It’s not that he has any trouble with her turning on her computer to see if she has a picture in her own files. It’s that she probably doesn’t and will have to email someone, which requires opening her email and there’s no way she’ll be able to avoid at least scanning the subject lines of everything people have sent her despite that she warned everyone not to bother her unless it was an emergency (which she then further defined as Aliens Bent On Dominating The Galaxy Emergency). She’s gotten much better at shutting off work and just being, but still needs the reminder sometimes.

Sam smiles and scribbles _event horizon picture_ right underneath _what are chair ties and why do we care about them_ and draws a little box she can check off later.

Two hours later, and every decision they’ve been told to make has been made. They’ll feed the information to Mallory in bits and pieces over the next three weeks (Sam is on the verge of arguing against that when Jack reminds her that Mallory has done the exact same thing to them, Sam just doesn’t notice because it all comes bundled once a week).

It cools off significantly at night and Jack turns off the air conditioning units and opens windows while Sam changes into something that doesn’t smell vaguely of sunscreen. He doesn’t mind the change; the black yoga pants rest low on her hips and the tank top isn’t quite long enough to cover a sliver of skin across her stomach and back.

“What’cha reading?” He asks when she flops down on the couch next to him, stretches her legs across his lap and opens a book. It’s the third one he’s seen since she arrived four days ago and he’s beginning to wonder if she kept all of them with her on the _Hammond_ and just didn’t have the time, or if she secretly smuggled a box of books into the cabin when he wasn’t looking.

Sam looks at the cover, needing to remind herself what she borrowed from the _Hammond_ ’s impromptu library. “ _Dandelion Wine_ ,” she says, “Ray Bradbury.”

Jack’s glad that it’s neither physics nor science-fiction, both of which tend to leave her grumbling about inaccurate assumptions and scientific impossibilities rather than relaxed. And there was the unfortunate weekend when she tried to read _Twilight_ based on Vala’s recommendation and kept yelling at the characters until he finally took the book away from her and threw it in the lake. “Good?”

She shrugs and tucks her hair, released from its earlier ponytail, behind her ear. “Haven’t started it yet.” Looking over the edge of the book, she notices Jack not really knowing what to do; he’d finished whatever crime novel he’d been reading earlier and her legs (which she knows he knows she’s quite okay with him moving) are keeping him from getting up and finding another one. She smiles.

“It was a quiet morning,” she starts, “the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.”

Jack smiles and leans his head on the back of the couch as she reads. His eyes close, her voice washing over him. It’s a different voice than he’s used to; still Sam, but smoother, almost melodic as another’s words roll fluidly off her tongue. He likes to think he’s the only one who’s ever heard her like this, though he suspects Cassie has as well - in the early years before she was completely comfortable with Janet.

The faint lapping of waves against the dock accompanies Sam’s voice, night bugs and the owl nesting in one of the big, ancient trees adding to the symphony. He sighs, content, and she turns a page, paper rustling against itself.

“He folded his arms and smiled a magician’s smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. It’ll be a fine season. He gave the town a last snap of his fingers. Doors slammed open; people stepped out. Summer 1928 began.”

Sam folds down the corner of the page and closes the book, sitting up just enough to set it on the coffee table before lying down again and closing her eyes. She blindly reaches behind her and clicks off the lamp, casting the cabin into darkness except for the full moon outside and the small emergency light in the hallway.

Marge jumps onto the arm of the sofa by Jack and walks, tripping slightly over Sam’s legs, until she gets to Sam’s stomach and settles down, purring happily. Sam lets the cat sit for a few minutes before the purring becomes too loud. “Okay, enough,” she whispers and sits up, encouraging Marge back onto the floor.

“Hey,” she says, shifting her legs from Jack’s lap, tucking them underneath her.

Jack opens his eyes and smiles. “Hey.” He reaches over and cups her cheek, brushing away a stray tendril of hair. Sam slowly leans in, kissing him. It’s no less magical than the first time - the first _real_ time, both aware of what they were doing, just before she left for Atlantis - and he tangles one hand in her hair, the other low on her back, as she slides into his lap and deepens the kiss.

“Want to move this elsewhere?” He murmurs in her ear after discarding her top, her breasts bare in his hands.

Sam opens her eyes just enough to see the cat dash out of sight. “Perfectly good floor right here,” she gasps.

* * *

Thanks to the _Hammond_ in orbit, Teal’c beams down directly onto the dock. Sam jumps, surprised at the sudden appearance of her friend, and then grins. She rights her upset glass of water - now almost empty with its ice cubes strewn across the dock - and stands to embrace him. It’s too hot to hold the hug for long, but enough to thank him for dropping whatever he had been doing with the Free Jaffa to come.

“Undomesticated equines, Samantha Carter,” he smiles. He hasn’t called her by her rank since the _Odyssey_. She smiles back and grips his hand.

“Is that Teal’c?” Jack shouts from inside the cabin just as a car pulls up out front. “Man, you guys have good timing.”

“I can’t believe you guys were going to do this without me!”

“Cassie!” Sam shouts in surprise and tugs a shirt over her head before the girl can sass her about putting some clothes on; she’d ditched the bikini in favor of a one-piece after discovering that sunburn, even mild, on her stomach was quite uncomfortable. She meets Cassie halfway and hugs her tightly, noticing Daniel following her.

Daniel simply shrugs with a mysterious smile when Jack asks how Cassie’s here and patiently waits his turn to hug Sam. “Good decision, by the way,” he whispers to Sam, having been on the receiving end of more of her _why the hell do we have to do this_ emails than even Jack.

“You still have to wear the penguin suit in a few months,” Jack says after extracting himself from Cassie’s hug to embrace Teal’c.

“So, what’s the plan?” Cassie asks once they’ve all settled down and agreed that Sam’s a little crazy for thinking that the weather’s actually nice. She knows the plan for the official wedding (which she doesn’t think is very official anymore, if they’re doing this now), and it involves professional hair and makeup and a fancy dress she’ll never wear again and a lot of people she doesn’t know, but she’s doing it for Sam and Sam has promised that in no way does Cassie have to give a Maid of Honor speech.

Jack swallows a mouthful of lemonade. They took care of the license and signing papers yesterday, and Teal’c offered to perform the ceremony when he first heard of their engagement (they’d had to turn him down when Operation Marshmallow became a problem, but when they’d asked him again he’d accepted with a smile). There are details to work out, like what they’re wearing and what to do about food, but that seems unnecessary at the moment. Surrounded by their friends, he looks across the table at Sam, a smile creeping over his face. She smiles back at him and winks.

“Sam and I are getting married tomorrow.”


End file.
